


hold on to your heart (hold on to mine)

by aimerai



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Feelings, M/M, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-26 02:44:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13226487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aimerai/pseuds/aimerai
Summary: Mat crawls into his bed at around midnight. He doesn’t press too close to Thomas, lies flat on his back with his hands laced on top of his ribs, looking up at the ceiling. Thomas feels like Mat’s not going to say anything, watches the slow rise and fall of his chest, and waits anyway.





	hold on to your heart (hold on to mine)

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so thanks to Ash and Nat who provided so much hand-holding and are also pretty much the reason this fic exists in the first place.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: if you or anyone you know is mentioned in this fic, just click away now and save us both the embarrassment.

Mat crawls into his bed at around midnight. He doesn’t press too close to Thomas, lies flat on his back with his hands laced on top of his ribs, looking up at the ceiling. Thomas feels like Mat’s not going to say anything, watches the slow rise and fall of his chest, and waits anyway.

Mat lets out a long, tired sigh, but still keeps his eyes fixed on the ceiling. “When I was eight? Nine, maybe.”

It shouldn’t feel like a whole answer when it’s only the beginning of one, to a question Thomas had asked so long ago he’d almost forgotten about it. Back before he’d actually known anything about Mat, and gotten lucky with a shot in the dark. He’s not sure how Mat doesn’t hate him for that one, for asking a deeply personal thing of Mat, unintentionally cruel.

“Okay,” Thomas says softly, reaching out to flatten a hand over where Mat’s heart would be. “Okay.”

“I’m sorry,” Mat offers, his voice just a bit hoarse. He’s still not looking at Thomas. “I didn’t—it was too late.”

Thomas presses down involuntarily, and his voice is too fierce for the dark room. “No, you don’t get to—this one’s not on you.”

“It kinda is,” Mat admits, and he untangles his own hands to lay one on top of Thomas’s, who coaxes Mat’s fingers along until they curl, until their hands are intertwined.

“Not for me,” Thomas says, obstinate.

Mat sighs a little but relaxes anyway, letting out a long exhale and finally, finally, he turns his head to look at Thomas. His hand squeezes Thomas’s, just a quick little pulse, and Thomas bites his lower lip. He’s out of his depth here, and Mat’s face is so carefully drawn into neutral lines.

“Okay,” Mat says, after a pause that was far too long.

If Thomas knew him better—if Thomas had been a better person when they'd both met, he'd offer to hold Mat. Mat probably wouldn't say yes, but he'd know, at least, that Thomas meant it. Instead, he squeezes Mat’s fingers with his own. “Go to sleep, Mat.”

“Yes, Mother,” Mat teases, with a ghost of a smile on his face.

“Sleep,” Thomas repeats.

“Good night,” Mat says softly, squeezing Thomas’s fingers.

Somehow, that little pulse feels an awful lot like ‘message received.’ Thomas falls asleep smiling, caught on his fingers and Mat’s, curved together.

* * *

Mat crawls into his bed early this time. It's only about 11 at night, and he once again lies flat on his back with his hands laced over his ribs, staring at the ceiling. He seems content to let Thomas dick around on his phone while he stares at the ceiling with a slight frown on his face.

When Thomas finally puts his phone down, and settles down to actually go to sleep, Mat’s face smooths out, but something about it still seems to imply a frown. He hasn't shifted much for the hour and a half or so for which Thomas has been on his phone—he hasn't really shifted at all. Thomas settles in on his side facing Mat, and makes an aborted twitch for Mat that the other boy doesn't notice simply because his eyes, directed towards the ceiling, are unfocused.

It's peaceful in the dark, Mat’s breaths so quiet that they're almost not there, only the rise and fall of his chest betraying him for alive. Thomas is drifting closer to asleep than awake when Mat opens his mouth. “No one noticed, you know.”

Thomas makes a sleepy sound of confusion, his brain coming back online for Mat.

Mat’s head tips down slightly. Thomas is starting to think that a pattern might be developing here, but he really doesn't mind. Mat repeats himself for Thomas. “No one noticed.”

“I'm sorry that they failed you,” Thomas says, voice genuinely filled with remorse. Because Mat has been failed. Because Thomas is starting to get the impression that once upon a time, Mat had been a bleeding heart. He’s starting to see all these fault lines in Mat, where he’s memorised awful things that people have told him and held them up as gospel even though they’re dirty fucking lies.

“I wouldn't call it failing me,” Mat says, his voice serene, his face still a little bit off. “Maybe it's more a commentary on how I was.”

“I'm sorry, but that's bullshit, Mat,” Thomas says, and there's a faint sensation of burning in his eyes. “You can't make judgment calls about yourself—you're a biased party.”

“Maybe I am,” Mat says, voice sounding disaffected even though there’s no way he could be disaffected about this. “But I have more right to judgment than you.”

Thomas lets that sit in the air for a moment, and considers his words carefully. He doesn't want to step on Mat’s toes more than he already has. “You do—of course you do. I'm just providing my own opinion, knowing what I know.”

“I know,” Mat says. His face is totally clear now, lacking even the impression of a frown and totally serene. “I do, and I appreciate it, but it's over a decade now and no one noticed in the first while, and no one really notices now. I don't know how you did.”

“I was never supposed to,” Thomas says. “I think I just got lucky.”

Mat starts humming softly—it's not perfect and it takes Thomas an embarrassingly long time to identify it as Daft Punk.

Thomas makes a face that he thinks Mat catches, because Mat’s mouth twitches slightly, even if he stubbornly continues to stare at the ceiling. “That song is old news; I can't actually believe you right now.”

“Sometimes appropriateness trumps modernity,” Mat says, and he's almost smiling, and Thomas really, really, really wants to see him smile, but Mat’s face returns to impassivity. “And sometimes I'm more unbiased than you.”

“You're such a little shit,” Thomas says, but he feels terribly fond, and daring enough to sling an arm around Mat’s waist.

Mat doesn't pull it off like Thomas is half-expecting him to. He's half-smiling at the ceiling. “You know,” he says, conversational except for the slight catch to his voice. “You never fail to surprise me.”

Thomas is suddenly nervous, heart threatening to pound right out of his chest. “In a bad way?”

“No,” Mat says immediately. “Not at all. I just—I can never tell what you're going to do, but somehow I don't mind.”

He turns his head to make eye contact with Thomas and Thomas can feel himself reddening, caught between Mat’s words and the look on his face, can feel his heartbeat in his fingertips, splayed across the skin of Mat’s waist where his tee shirt has rucked up somehow.

Mat smiles, and Thomas would go as far as to call it sweet, and that's—that's new. “You're a lot more than I bargained for, but I like it.”

Thomas doesn't know how his heart doesn't just jump out of his chest at that, but he has to cover his burning face in Mat’s shoulder.

He can hear the smile in Mat’s voice as Mat wraps his long fingers around Thomas’s wrist. “Good night,” Mat murmurs.

God, this boy will kill him.

* * *

Mat slips into his bed later this time, when Thomas is more asleep than awake, when Thomas had decided that Mat probably wouldn’t this time. He stays at the very edge of the bed—Thomas is worried that he’s going to fall off, and he’s stiffer than a board, arms crossed defensively over his chest. Mat doesn’t want to be here; he’s so obviously uncomfortable. Thomas is flooded with adrenaline, awake in a matter of milliseconds. He’s got a feeling that this is going to be the night that Mat finally says no, no matter what happened last time.

Mat lets out a huff of breath, eyes fixed towards the ceiling and as much away from Thomas as he can get. “I don’t think you get it.” His voice is normal, but it feels too loud for the dark quiet stillness of their room so late at night.

Thomas may be horizontal right now, but it still feels like his heart drops to somewhere near his feet. “Get what?”

“I don’t have anything to offer you,” Mat says, and his voice is just blank. Normal. Thomas wonders who Mat’s been talking to that makes him say these kinds of things, because it’s bullshit, it’s so fucking bullshit. Mat is so much all of the time, spilling out of the body he's in, expanding to fill wherever he is. Thomas always knows where Mat is in a room. Even before he liked him, Thomas always knew where Mat was in a room.

“Mat,” Thomas says, and his voice is just—he doesn't know how Mat doesn't just fucking get it. Thomas is an open book at night, with Mat in his bed. His defences are always lowered; he doesn’t know how not to tell the truth. “Mat, I don't—you’re already so much all the time. I don’t need more from you than what you already are.”

“But you want more,” Mat says, and, well. He’s not quite wrong, except that he really, really is.

“Look at me,” Thomas says, his voice measured and too calm for the way his heart is pounding against his ribs. “Please.”

He thinks Mat is going to refuse him, but he should have learned by now that he’s terrible at predicting the things that Mat will or won’t do. Mat turns onto his side, facing Thomas, arms still crossed, face pinched.

“What I want, from you, is whatever you want to give me,” Thomas says, fiercely. “Whatever you can give me. But you’re enough as you are. You always have been.”

“You sound like something out of a movie,” Mat says, but Thomas can see him softening, can see him trying to decide if Thomas actually means it.

Thomas makes a face at him. “Please don’t say that. You—it makes me feel like you’re not taking me seriously.”

“Am I—have I been hurting your feelings?” Mat asks, his eyes widening a little, suddenly looking very, very awkward.

Thomas sighs a little, shifts, and pushes down on the hysteria, because otherwise he’s going to start laughing even though it’s the opposite of funny. “A little bit. They’ll survive.”

Mat uncrosses his arms and reaches across the gap between them, his fingertips just barely brushing across the part of Thomas’s chest that covers his heart, still beating like a kick drum. “Hey, I’m sorry. It’s just—this is hard.” And he really does look apologetic, soft and tired, the corners of his mouth downturned.

“Good things are, sometimes,” Thomas says. It’s not forgiveness, but it’s understanding. Thomas is still a little out of his wheelhouse with Mat, but it’s the same for Mat. Of course they’re going to step on each other’s feelings. Maybe one day they’ll know each other well enough to not, but right now everything is new and tender. They’re learning each other’s weak spots.

“Okay,” Mat says, but his mouth is still downturned. It’s like Mat forgot the reason they’ve been having these late night chats, and part of Thomas is mad about it, the part of him that’s not rational. The rational part of him gets it: the world’s thrown a lot of bullshit Mat’s way.

“Good night,” Thomas says, closing his eyes.

Mat’s fingers trail down his chest a little before Mat moves them away, and Thomas misses the touch, light as it had been.

* * *

Mat crawls into his bed as soon as he's done with his shower, dressed for bed, hair almost completely dried. He does the same thing he's done before the last time they did this—arms over his ribs and fingers laced as he frowns at the ceiling petulantly. It's a little more than a little cute, and Thomas almost wants to tell him that. He puts his phone away almost immediately but leaves the bedside lamp on his side on. His eyes always adjust enough to see Mat’s face—there's always enough ambient light from the windows, but there's something different about how soft Mat looks in the dim yellow glow of the lamp.

Mat doesn’t take as long to start talking this time. “I’d try.” The ‘for you’ is unspoken, but Thomas still hears it loud and clear, kicking up his heartbeat until it’s far from calm and closer to racing.

“Offer’s still open,” Thomas says, trying to contain the edges of his smile, but he can’t. “You’re worth it.”

“You can’t just say things like that,” Mat says, and he’s turned onto his side to face Thomas, his eyes wide and cheeks flushing even more as Thomas watches, fascinated. “You can’t just— _Thomas_.”

He sounds so helpless in that moment, and he still doesn’t get it, somehow. Thomas is so, so fond of him.

“Mat,” Thomas says, voice bubbling with all the warm things Mat’s ever made him feel. “Mat, I asked you out.”

Mat has turned impossibly redder. “I know, but—”

“No, no, please stop talking, you’re so stupid about this, I like you so fucking much, and sometimes even I don’t know why,” Thomas says, reaching out for Mat’s hand, and pulling it so their intertwined hands rest in the middle of the space between them on the bed.

“I don’t, most of the time,” Mat admits, his voice small in a way he never is.

Thomas thinks he’s allowed now, so he brings their clasped hands up to his mouth to kiss the back of Mat’s hand. Mat looks awestruck. “You’re a good thing, and even if you’re not the focus of a room, sometimes you’re the only thing I notice, anyway. Sometimes, with you, my heart almost beats out of my chest. Sometimes that’s the only thing I can feel.”

Mat’s eyes are blown dark and he’s biting his lip. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Thomas says, unable to look at Mat’s face anymore, his cheeks feeling hot. Mat makes him feel so much that he doesn’t know how to put it all into words, doesn’t know how to explain that his heart could be down the bottom of a well, could be frozen in the heart of a glacier, and he’d still feel it in his fingertips every time Mat came to sleep in his bed.

“If I had mine still, it’d be yours. It would’ve been yours the day you asked,” Mat says, and Thomas can look at him again after all.

“Come _here_ ,” Thomas says, pulling on Mat through their joined hands till he slides closer, and then closer still. “It's been driving me crazy."

"What has?" Mat asks, a little breathless, smiling in a way that transforms his face completely. Thomas didn’t realise that this whole song and dance they were doing was eating at him, but seeing Mat smile now—it must have.

“Having you in my bed when you wouldn't let me do this," Thomas says, gently maneuvering Mat till he's facing Thomas, still smiling that smile, their legs tangled, their chests almost touching when they breathe in together. He lets go of Mat’s hand only to wrap an arm around Mat—not to pull him closer, but just because he can.

Mat's smile is softer, now. "Satisfied?"

"Yeah," Thomas says simply, his arm around Mat tightening slightly.

“Me too,” Mat says, and the two of them are almost nose to nose.

Thomas isn’t surprised that Mat kisses him, then, except that he is, except that he makes a noise and Mat pulls away, looking nervous. So this time, Thomas leans in to kiss Mat, whose lips, he discovers, are surprisingly soft. They trade a series of chaste, lingering kisses, learning the shape of each other's lips, until Mat pulls away, and tries to hide his yawn.

“Good night,” Thomas says, amused.

Mat looks like he's going to protest, but he yawns again, still trying to contain it. It tugs at Thomas’s heart a little.

“You’re falling asleep,” Thomas says, trying not to laugh, but it warms him, that Mat is right here with him. “I’ll still be here in the morning.”

Mat kisses him again, quick enough that Thomas almost misses it, and smiles like he just got away with something. “Good night.”

* * *

Thomas is the one crawling into Mat’s bed this time, slotting up behind him and draping an arm over his waist. This is going to be an easier conversation to have if he can’t see Mat’s face, even if they have it in the dark. “Some days, I think that I wouldn’t mind living like you.”

“Why?” Mat asks, confused.

“I’ve seen so many people who let their hearts rot for stupid reasons,” Thomas admits casually, only his voice is raw, no casualness there at all. There’s too many people to name, too many people that he watched throw away the rest of the relationships in their lives. He’s so nervous about how this is going to go, hands sweaty, heart racing. Mat turns in Thomas’s arms, and whatever he sees in Thomas’s face must worry him, because Mat lets Thomas tuck his face into Mat’s collarbone and breathe out several very shaky breaths. This isn’t a stupid reason. It never has been, and his heart has almost jumped out of his chest so many times, with Mat. And if his heart is ready, then Thomas is just dragging his feet on this. It's been Mat for a while, for long enough to feel like forever. 

When he feels more or less steady, which takes a few more breaths and a kiss pressed to Mat’s collarbone, he shifts away just enough that he can look at Mat’s face and gives each word its proper weight. This is important. “You’re not a stupid reason.”

Mat is quiet for a really long time, but Thomas has just given him a hell of a lot to think about. When he speaks, his voice is rough. “Thomas.”

“You’re not,” Thomas says, sure. “If I thought you’d take it, I’d have given it to you ages ago.”

“What made you think I would now?” Mat asks. His face is hard to read, but he’s biting his lip, which means he’s unsure, which means—maybe.

Thomas shrugs as best he can when he’s on his side. “I know you. I love you. Nothing about us has been all that easy, but you’re still here.”

Mat is starting to smile, now. “I always manage to forget that you’re like this.” And he’s said as much before, that Thomas is unpredictable to him, often frank in a way that makes Mat blush. Sometimes Thomas even does it on purpose, because Mat when he’s red and embarrassed by Thomas is a delightful sight, but this feels deadly serious. And in a way, it kinda is.

“If you want to—if you’re really sure—I’ll take it. I love you, too, but you know that already,” Mat says, but Thomas can feel the slight tremor in Mat. He’s nervous, too, and that's reassuring.

Thomas focuses on Mat’s words, the warmth Mat makes him feel, and doesn’t pull back this time. Releases all the control he has and his heart pops out without much warning, glowing faintly pink, hovering in the air above them. Thomas’s chest feels different, but he’s not sure he can describe how. It’s not a bad thing, really.

Mat’s forehead is wrinkled. “That didn’t take long.”

“You’re you,” Thomas says simply, snagging his heart out of the air and presenting it to Mat without any flourishes. This is what feels right, anyway. In the dark, with just the two of them, no fuss and feathers, just the truth and the way they feel about each other. “Can I?”

Mat nods, and his eyes are on Thomas and not Thomas’s heart, and he looks almost unbearably soft in the slight pink glow. Thomas gently presses it into Mat’s chest, right about at the place where it used to sit in his own, and it goes in easily, no resistance at all. Mat lets out a quiet ‘oh’ and then nothing at all, and it takes Thomas almost too long to realise that Mat is crying silently, tears streaming across his face and into the pillow.

“Mat?” He asks, worried.

Mat swipes the backs of his hands across his eyes. “Just—you love me a lot, don’t you?”

“I’ve been telling you that,” Thomas says, all of the fondness he feels swelling. He loves this ridiculous, stupid boy, who still manages to be surprised by exactly how much Thomas loves him even though he knows it like he knows the sky is blue and grass is green.

“I can _feel_ that,” Mat whispers, a hand pressed to his chest. He makes it sound like it's a revelation, but he knows how stupid in love Thomas is. “Fuck, Thomas.”

“I told you. You’re not a stupid reason,” Thomas says.

“I know,” Mat says, and there’s still that awe in his voice. “This is a lot. Is this how you always feel?”

“Pretty much,” Thomas says, smiling crookedly.

“Me too,” Mat says, softly. “I’m never going to be able to prove it, unless a miracle happens, but me too.”

“I know,” Thomas says, pulling Mat closer, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “You don’t need to, I know.”

**Author's Note:**

> usually i do real notes but honestly i have no explanation for this. i'm @aimerai1419 on twitter and @aimeraiwrites on tumblr and mostly i start AUs and then take forever to finish them.  
> (also i just really wanted this posted before the new year)


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